Cincinnati mainstays Tucker's, Eckerlin Meats named in report about best U.S. breakfast places

Saul Weinstein, of Tucker's Restaurant, take food orders from Mary and Joe Schubauer-Berigan, of Clifton, during a fundraising event for Tucker's on Sunday. The money raised at the event go back to restoring the Vine Street restaurant that burned in a fire July 27, 2015.(Photo: The Enquirer/Madison Schmidt)

Food and Wine magazine recently featured best breakfast places across the U.S. and two Cincinnati-area eateries, Tucker's in Over-The-Rhine and Eckerlin Meats at Findlay Market, received high marks in Ohio.

Here's what Food and Wine said about the food places in Cincinnati and across the state.

Tucker's

Tucker’s is here to welcome everyone, just like always, whether you’ve come from around the corner, or the leafy suburbs, whether your business is at street level, or high up one of the downtown towers. People come to Tucker’s for the singular atmosphere, but there is good food, too—biscuits and gravy, dressed hash browns, a six-cheese omelet, all from quality ingredients; prices are generously retro, as they often are at Cincinnati's older restaurants. You don’t get out the door without sampling the premier regional breakfast specialty, goetta, a poor man's sausage with old world roots. Pork, beef, sometimes offal, is blended with steel-cut oats and spices, then sliced and fried, and while it's much easier to find (and afford) the sausages that goetta (get-uh) once replaced, try telling Cincinnati that—the love affair remains strong.

Tucker's Restaurant when it reopened in October, after being closed since July 2015 due to fire damage.
(Photo: The Enquirer/Meg Vogel)

Eckerlin Meats

Speaking of regionally specific meats, on Saturday mornings, a couple of blocks away you’ll find the almost-ancient Findlay Market quarter in full swing, with lots more to eat—nothing quite so memorable, however, as the breakfast sandwiches at Eckerlin Meats. You want one with the funky-delicious (and high quality) house goetta, of course. In some states, all of this would add up to enough, and we could happily move on, but this is Ohio, and the possibilities are endless.

You could wake up in Amish country, for example, at 5:30 in the morning, to breakfast with the locals at Berlin's Boyd & Wurthmann, where they’ve been at it since the 1930’s, so you figure you know a thing or two, and they do.

Clifton Mill

On that same, old-school note, consider the terribly photogenic Clifton Mill, dating back to 1802. Located right above the Little Miami River, not far from Dayton, visitors can tuck into all-day breakfasts of giant pancakes made from house-milled flours, slabs of fried cornmeal mush, biscuits with bacon gravy, or sausage gravy, and when you’re done with all that, pie.

Not very far away in fashionable Columbus, two Blue Bottle Coffee grads are bringing Bay Area bakery/cafe culture to the middle of the country with Fox in the Snow, featuring one very good breakfast sandwich—souffled egg with candied bacon, Swiss cheese, arugula and dijon cream on toasted ciabatta. That should be enough, but there’s also some of the best pastry in town, along with very good coffee, and one of the most happening crowds around, always. (Note: There are now two locations.)